Lisa Nankivil

Born in Minneapolis, Lisa Nankivil is noted for her luminous, striped-format oil paintings and abstract monoprints. Building on the painterly traditions of American and European modernism, Nankivil uses an intuitive process of layering and manipulating innumerable bands of color and transparent glazes. The vitality of her abstract canvases is heightened by the effects of optical mixing, encouraging close scrutiny of the complex interplays of color, texture, and light. Formally and conceptually, Nankivil's work explores the ambiguities of pictorial space, revealing the subjective nature of perception.

According to art historian William Peterson, the striped format of Nankivil's paintings evolved while she was concentrating on certain figure-ground relationships in her work. "I was searching for ways to make the background as essential as the image," she says. "I began to explore qualities such as motion, ascendance, and hierarchy through painted stripes, and eventually the image fell away leaving me to navigate the implications of the vertical and the horizontal by painting only the orientations with stripes." A phrase in the art writings of John Berger, "Home is where the vertical meets the horizontal..." helped her as she began...

Minneapolis College of Art and Design, BFA, Painting
University of Minnesota, Studio Art

2016
Lisa Nankivil: New Paintings, McCormick Gallery, Chicago, IL

The Edge: Hard Edge Abstraction, McCormick Gallery, Chicago IL

Art on the Plains XII, Plains Art Museum, Fargo ND. Juror Aaron Spangler

2015
McNay Art Fair, McNay Art Museum, San Antonio Texas, Marlborough Graphics (New York)

IFPDA Print Fair, Park Avenue Armory, New York, Marlborough Graphics (New York)

2014
Editions/Artists' Books Fair 2014, New York, Highpoint Editions (Minneapolis)

Modern Selections, Spanierman Modern, New York

Expo Chicago, McCormick Gallery, Chicago

The Fine Print: Artwork from Highpoint Editions, McKnight Foundation, Cynthia Binger Boynton Gallery, Minneapolis

2014 Minnesota Biennial, Minnesota Museum of American Art, St. Paul | Curated by Christina Chang, Brian Frink, and Meredith Lynn

IFPDA Print Fair, Park Avenue Armory, New York, Marlborough Graphics (New York)

Lisa Nankivil: Metes & Bounds, McCormick Gallery, Chicago

Lists: An International Exhibit, Gallery 308, Minneapolis | Curated by Harriet Bart, Scott Helmes, and Eric Lorberer

From Beyond the Window, University of Minnesota, Katherine E. Nash Gallery, Minneapolis | Curated by Jil Evans and Howard Oransky

July Selections, Spanierman Modern,...